Month: December 2024

Happy Frickin New Year! Here’s to a fresh start!

I have decided that tonight is going to be my best New Years in years. Am I going to be out drunk and ridiculous and unsafe? NO. Am I going to go party with friends? NO. But, I will be at home, eating fresh home cooked seafood with my husband and my cacophony of dogs and dog noise and dancing ridiculously to horrible 80s and 90s music with heavy bass and actually intelligible lyrics! Whooo!

Sounds boring? Well, I disagree. I have done a lot this year, all of it hard. I fought brain cancer. I fought my way back to consciousness after a coma. I managed to keep my business afloat and make sure all my employees were taken care of. I managed to begin digging myself out of the financial hole I was drifting and sinking down in with all the crazy stuff going on.

So, a little down time, me time, husband time and dog time sounds like just the perfect, normal and enjoyable thing. My positivity is soaring so high despite everything that I think it was literally reaching people even at McDonalds today when they gave me free food for a mistake that they did not actually make! Score!

So, everyone, I say have fun out there. Please be safe. Please savor life to the fullest. Have a good time and don’t do anything you will regret for longer than say 24 hours. Happy New Year everyone!

Dr. Katz

No news is good news!

I hear this cheerful sentence from the vet and doctor’s offices all the time. They say it with a smile as if you are supposed to find it amazing and reassuring if you do not hear from them. You are supposed to rejoice at the lack of bad news, or any news whatsoever.

You know what I hear when they say that? I don’t need to take the time to reach out to you personally to let you know that you are ok. I have just saved myself a ton of time in my busy day. Nothing about this statement lets me know that they are actually concerned about me or my pet, or that I can actually be sure that they didn’t miss something and forgot to call? That could happen too ya know. How long do I wait before I know it really is no news is good news? Are we sure after a week, two weeks, a month? See where I am going with this?

You see, at my office we call, or if we can’t get through, we text or leave a message about every darn thing, good, bad, ugly, sideways, or fantastic. That way we almost eliminate the chance of missing anything and the patient or customer has no question in their minds that they are worth our time and investment in their care. So, what if the majority of the calls are just to say that something is normal. Awesome! Then you are also making sure that you are giving yourself little to no chance of missing the few abnormal or bad news ones. To me it’s a no brainer. Inform everyone about everything. You tend to miss less this way and it shows that you give a crap. Ok diatribe over for now. Have a great day everybody.

Dr. Katz

Look How Far We’ve Come!

My husband and I have just celebrated 31 years together, 25 of them legal! Yes, that means that we just had our 25th wedding anniversary. We got to spend it in New Orleans with all kinds of food, ghost, voodoo, music, and fun. It was a wonderful time. I felt so fortunate that we got to spend it together, just the two of us. It had been several years since one or the other of us were sick and could not enjoy each other on our anniversary for one reason or another. This year was truly a blessing.

I started thinking back about how far we’ve come. I first met my husband in medical school. How he first drew my attention was the fact that he was literally the guy that laughed 30 seconds longer than anyone else in the entire lecture auditorium, loudly and with vigor. To the point that you were kind of shrinking down in your seat and hunching your shoulder with embarrassment, even though you weren’t the one doing the laughing…Oh lord. He also wore leisure suites fresh out the 70s every single day to school. Um what?! I gotta say, that was unique if nothing else.

So, we weren’t actually friends or hung out in any way and then one day, he invites himself to a concert with me and a friend of mine. I am ashamed to say that we actually refused to pick him up at his apartment because he lived in a part of Detroit that we were scared of at at the time (this was back in the 90s, not Detroit as we know it now). Well, he was un-fased and actually drove an hour way to meet us up at a dance club in his broke-ass, bungie cord hatchback attached Sunbird SE to meet us! We ended up dancing the night away. He had the whole club heying and hoing in a matter of 20 minutes! He complimented my absolutely horrible outfit…with sincerity! We ended up going back to my house together and he looked with rapt attention at my ridiculous post card collection and ate my parents terrible food and we talked til dawn, just like a movie. Honest to gosh.

Now, here we are 31 years later. Still happy and thriving. We have mounted the sometimes un-seemingly recoverable obstacles and tragedies and kept on going. We are both independent physicians and take care of people of all ages every day. We laugh until we almost pee our pants. We like the same ridiculous jokes. We watch chick flicks together. We are parents to three beautiful girls, who feel more like 6 any given day. I’m telling ya, we got it going on. You just never know what joy you could end up with if you give things a chance.

Dr. Katz

Sitting here quietly

Just sitting here quietly on Christmas morning, listening to my gentle music Christmas blend, snuggling with my dogs. I am taking a moment to soak it all in. It just dawned on me this is the first Christmas in like three years that I am not either waiting for a terrible health diagnosis or in between cancers. Wow! That just hit me like a soothing wave of calm, mixed with excitement and relaxation in the mundane all at the same time. Yesterday I was doing my regular old last minute Christmas eve grocery shopping and I couldn’t have been happier. The business, the franticness of the other customers didn’t even phase me. I was so frickin happy to be shopping for my family like a normal wife and mother that I think I was practically skipping through the store. I know it sounds silly, but gosh I have been waiting for this feeling for a long time now. I am finally allowing myself to enjoy it, now seven months after discharge from my last hospital stay.

I know I am just really heady right now but I am soaking it up. Everyone deserves this kind of peace, even if just for a moment. Who knows if everything could revert back to unholy crap. Well, maybe it could. That’s how life goes. But, for now, I will just sit here with a smile on my face and let it sink in.

Have a wonderful holiday everyone! Sending many peaceful and joyous vibes.

Dr. Katz

At least I had a tangible enemy

Ok brace yourself. I am going to say something that is initially going to sound a little crazy, but just bear with me. I actually consider myself lucky that cancer was my battle to fight. I know a ton of people right now going through things with as yet discovered causes and no specific direction or plan. It is an awful way to exist. The discomfort, the suffering, the lack of answers, the whole nine yards. The fear of the unknown is a real thing. I think it literally is an impediment to healing.

I am hear to tell ya, that my cancer was no picnic. To say that I am lucky sounds ridiculous to say. I get it that I am not lucky that I had cancer, twice in two years. Yes I know. What I mean to say more purposefully is that at least my demon was described and known and right in front of me, allowing me to have a definite target to tackle. It was terrifying for sure, but at least I had the privilege of knowing what I was fighting. It intensified my focus and enhanced my hope that there might be an end to the tunnel. Everybody I know right now that is battling does not have a set enemy in sight and no specific plan. Bottom line, I am sending out the discovery and healing vibes out to everyone I know that is battling right now. I am here if you need me. I am here to help strategize. I am here to help if you want me to.

Dr. Katz

Let’s Talk Therapy

Did you know that about 50 percent, if not more, of cancer patients/warriors/survivors have some form of ptsd? Ptsd stands for post-traumatic stress disorder. Ptsd occurs when someone has experienced or witnessed a shocking, scary, terrifying, traumatic, or dangerous event. This leads them to over respond to any sort of trauma from thereafter in an often debilitating or exaggerated way and could affect the rest of their life. It is a terrible condition. Therapy is an absolute must to try to combat this condition.

As a two-time cancer patient, I can tell ya, this crap is real. It can be devastating, debilitating and down right crappy. You find yourself freaking out at the slightest twinge, expecting the worst and not even considering the best. You have a scan coming up and find yourself grabbing for the ativan just to make it through it. It can get pretty ridiculous. Logic tells you that everything will likely be fine, but it is tough to believe it because your past experiences have taught you otherwise.

Ok, it sounds awful right? Heart pounding, sweating, pulse racing, fear coursing through your veins, ibs gettin all crazy. But, here’s the good news. There really is help out there, if you are willing to pursue it. You do not have to remain a prisoner of this terrible thing. That option is therapy. I mean actual, dig deep, deal with your demons, full disclosure psychological therapy. As difficult as it is, it can help you deal with your demons and identify your triggers and develop strategies that can either help you deal with these episodes when they happen or prevent them from happening in the first place. It’s truly a possibility of all wins.

The bottom line is that if you really want to start living after fighting your toughest enemy ever, you have to deal with the leftovers. You just have to, or else the fight won’t seem worth it in the first place.

On that note, I’m off to my regularly scheduled therapy appt. Peaceful vibes and power wishes.

Dr. Katz